Nevada pols won’t shut up about Vegas victimization

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 | 3:22 p.m.

Three years after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used silly legislation as a diversionary tactic, Rep. Shelley Berkley is using the same method to stop the anti-Vegas madness sweeping the nation’s capital.

And her opponent, Sen. Dean Heller, realizing he better show he loves Las Vegas as much as she does, immediately signed onto her effort to outlaw a blacklist that never really existed. This is a heartwarming display of Washington, DC, bipartisanship and prioritizing on important – nay, critical – issues of the day.

The genesis of all of this maneuvering can be traced to Feb. 9, 2009, when President Obama said at a town hall in Illinois: “"You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime.”

Of course those are completely reasonable comments – don’t use bailout money to travel to Las Vegas. But then-Mayor Oscar Goodman blew his stack so he could get on national television and that either made the damage worse – or caused much of it – and so Democrats, especially Reid, scrambled to stanch the bleeding.

After The Wall Street Journal unearthed Bush era documents suggesting agencies were discouraged from visiting resort cities, Reid introduced the “Protecting Resort Cities from Discrimination Act of 2009” (the new civil rights movement!), which eventually died after the hubbub subsided. Here’s everything you ever wanted to know about that bill

Reid also exchanged choreographed letters with the White House to show how outraged he was and how Obama felt our pain.

And then the controversy was gone – until the president, showing little gratitude for all the cover Reid & Co. provided in 2009 – said this almost exactly a year later.

The GOP used the set of remarks against Reid in 2010 and continued to brandish them when the opportunity arose.

The came the GSA scandal, which would only have been possible if agencies actually were allowed to come to Las Vegas, showing there was no real blacklist. Reid and other politicians wailed about the attacks on poor ole Vegas, emphasizing, as the majority leader did, the GSA’s stupidity and lack of common sense. But that’s not enough.

So now Berkley has her own version of Reid's 2009 legislation (maybe she has more clout then he does and can get it passed) and her opponent, Sen. Dean Heller, quickly signed on, so she couldn’t use it as an issue against him, especially since his GOP colleague, Rand Paul, is revving up the issue . (As if to emphasize the insincerity of this entire spectacle, Heller's release embracing Berkley's bill also attacked her on familiar talking points, so Berkley responded by thanking him and then...bashing him on familiar talking points. No other cheek left unturned.)

So everyone is suitably outraged and Congress can waste some time debating whether cities should be “personally attacked,” as Goodman II put it, and whether a blacklist, even though one never existed, should be illegal.

Aren’t you proud to be a Nevadan?